The East Anglian area has its own dialect – or groups of dialects – as well. It has a long history, just like the dialects of the Northern Area. In 575 the Anglian Kingdom was founded¹⁰ as a result of the uniting of the North and Suth Folk (note the Norfolk and Suffolk areas). Besides the Angles, the Saxons lived in these surroundings too, probably since the Romans ruled Britain. Both peoples influenced speech a lot and some words still are used in the East Anglian region, for example:

• dickey = donkey¹¹                                         
• dodman = snail¹¹
• mawkin = scarecrow¹¹
• mawther = girl¹¹

The Angles and Saxon were very experienced in building flat longboats. This enabled them to travel and settle in other places of the Angle Land as well.

Furthermore, there were  refugees who also added some words to East Anglian vocabulary. There are a number of places in Norwich, and other urban areas, which elsewhere would be called ‘squares’ but which are called ‘plains’ –Bank Plain and St Mary’s Plain in Norwich for instance —which remind us of the identical use of ‘plein’ in northern Belgium and the Netherlands. They also left behind a number of other words such as ‘dwile’ ‘floorcloth’ (Dutch ‘dweil’), ‘fye out’ ‘clean up’ (Dutch ‘vegen’ ‘to sweep’), and push ‘boil, pimple’ (Dutch ‘puist’ or ‘buil’)¹¹.

A famous speaker of the East-Anglian dialect is Peter Trudgill – he is one of the editors of the book ‘Language Skills’ and honorary professor at the University of East Anglia.

Enjoy the East-Anglian accent and some words of dialect in the following clip: